making progress on studio.FAB

I’m getting closer to a working beta prototype of studio.FAB.  today I finished up about 95% of the wiring and mounted the extruder and hot end, so  I thought I’d share images of my extruder/hot end setup.  many 3D printers have an extruder design that couples a geared motor that pushes the plastic filament directly into the hot end (the part that melts + deposits the plastic onto yr print surface.) this design sits right on the x-axis and moves back and forth as the machine prints. studio.FAB, however, uses a “bowden cable” design which is slightly different – the geared motor (shown above) pushes the filament into a tube (in this case PTFE/teflon) which connects to the hot end.  the geared motor is stationary – it’s mounted to the frame – and only the hot end moves back and forth along the x-axis.  this allows for faster and more stable printing because not only is the x-axis lighter, it’s not constantly shaking from the momentum of moving the heavy stepper motor back and forth.
this is also beneficial for studio.FAB too – it should make swapping out different tool heads much quicker.